Late bloomer: PwC manager Yuriy Yurchuk’s transformation into a world-class …
After eight years in finance, young baritone Yuriy Yurchuk is winning over the audience at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. It sounds incredible but he saw his first opera, The Tales of Hoffmann, only four years ago. He would have laughed if somebody told him he would become an opera singer. In fact, the successful MA manager at PwC only discovered his vocal talent after his move to America.
A bright graduate from Kyiv’s National Economic University with a degree in finance, Yurchuk began his successful career as a manager at PwC’s Kyiv office before being transferred to Chicago. In US he had to work a lot, didn’t have many friends and needed a hobby to free his mind after long hours at the office. So Yurchuk used to dance salsa, which Yuriy believes contributed to his “musical self”. He then took voice lessons, both for fun and to try something new.
When Yuriy was a teenager, one of his music teachers told him he shouldn’t even bother singing since he didn’t have a voice. Bu today he is sure that 95% of people “do have ‘a’ voice”. It may not be a first class one that would allow a person to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. But if you are taught by a professional during a considerable period of time you will be able to sing, at least well enough to please your family and friends. “The City folk would be surprised how much one hour a week of singing lessons may change in their lives”, said Yurchuk.
“When you sing you load a different part of your brain and you completely switch off. I could not remember a single time during my voice lessons I would think about business matters. And the next day you feel more rested and you have more energy to continue doing whatever you were doing before”, Yuriy explained.
His new American teacher was perplexed: she openly confessed she didn’t know what to do with Yuriy and sent him to a singing competition where he could get some useful feedback from the judging panel, one of who was the former New York City Opera bass-baritone Marc Embree. At the time, Embree was a professor at DePaul University in Chicago. He wrote Yurchuk a whole page of critical comments telling him his arms were tense, his voice wasn’t placed right, he was not standing correctly, etc. At the same time, the maitre mentioned he heard “something”.
“When I listen to my phone recording of that day, it is terrible, I don’t know how Embree could detect anything at all. But I believed him and contacted him right after. My financial mind immediately noticed someone who was structured about singing and knew a lot on the subject. It is very important because singing is still a grey area to many people, even to those who do it professionally”, Yuriy said.
Since then, Yurchuk’s journey to the world of opera began. The emerging singer kept working for PwC. The first year he was a full-time employee, the classes were on the weekends and singing remained more of a hobby. His second and third years were much more serious. His company was very supportive and allowed Yurchuk to go part-time. He turned into a “plug-in resource” and helped when the company needed an extra pair of hands. Yuriy believes, it was “the first part-time in the history of the Ukrainian-American MA department.” His bosses also created a separate reporting system to track what he was doing.
“I kept with this for two years and it required specific financial mentality to get it down at whatever cost. And at the second part of the day or what was left I had to transform into an art person and do it in a more measured and sensible way,” he remembered.
The switch was enormous not only in terms of pay or becoming a student again, after being at a managerial position. Yuriy also had to rebuild his whole approach to work. “If your job is in finance and, especially in MA, you know you need to finish a project by a certain deadline, doesn’t matter how. In America this is an ever faster process than in Ukraine; a deal may take a week and a half. Basically, you try to do your best in a short amount of time. And you can allow yourself sleepless nights. In singing it is like growing a plant. You cannot force it,” said the baritone.
It was essential to progress steadily, grain by grain. “So I found my pitfalls many times, by trying to sing three hours in a row to get something right so the next week I would not have any voice at all. Or even more dangerous, you think you can get it right by overworking it and you don’t lose your voice because I was 28 and strong, but you gradually sense that you achieve the opposite result. You decrease the quality of the voice and lose what you had before”, he says.
His stint at PwC helped him in his music career. Yurchuk was way more organized than his younger music cohorts. He was also more persistent and the fact that he had a career allowed him to take risks. Thanks to his previous experience with a 16-hour work day, he could do a lot more than people who had different work ethics.
His wife was always of a great support, but the family in Kyiv had remained skeptical until they heard Yuriy this summer in London.
Today, Yurchuk still has to fight against the stereotypes related to his unusual background. There is a great competition in his new field of interest, with 50-60 talented people applying to the same position. Back at PwC, Yurchuk was getting dozens of emails with job offers per week, he nostalgically recalls.
Many people look at his resume now and tend to think he is “not ready” even though the ex-financier sings at the main stage at Royal Opera House. He confesses that some may share an opinion that hiring him is like hiring a new graduate for a managerial position in MA. But this isn’t true, and at every audition he has to prove himself again and again.
“An opera career is like getting into a closed club. Once you get there, you will stay there. I was lucky to get so far so I am not going to give it up, it would be unfair to everyone who supported me and invested in me”, concludes the baritone.
In January, Yurchuk will be singing in Tosca and in La traviata at ROH. La traviata will be also screened live in cinemas worldwide on February 4.
Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the start of the 2014/15 Season. In his first season, his roles included Steersman (Tristan und Isolde), Dumas (Andrea Chénier), Prince Yamadori (Madama Butterfly) and Baron Douphol (La traviata) on the main stage and Germano (La scala di seta, Meet the Young Artists Week) in the Linbury Studio Theatre. In the 2015/16 season his roles include Blazes/Officer (The Lighthouse, Meet the Young Artists Week), Angelotti (Tosca), Baron Douphol and Johann (Werther).
Yuriy Yurchuk as Michonnet in Betrothal and Betrayal at the Royal Opera House this past July.
Yurchuck playing Blazes, the Second Officer in Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse in October 2015.
Photos: Clive Barda
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